Leopard Seal

Long, muscular, and countershaded silver below to dark grey above, the leopard seal is unmistakable for its leopard-like spotting. It is the second-largest seal species in Antarctica after the southern elephant seal, and matches a walrus in length while weighing roughly half as much. Its jaws are massive, its teeth 2.5cm long, and its diet ranges from krill and fish to cephalopods, penguins, and other seals — an apex predator answerable only to the orca.

On our voyages, the best sightings tend to come along the ice edges of the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands, where leopard seals haul out on floes near penguin colonies or patrol the shallows waiting for chicks to enter the water. Further south, they turn up regularly in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, and around Elephant Island and the Antarctic Sound, usually between November and March, when open leads make both travel and hunting easier.

They are unhurried on the ice — often just a raised head tracking a passing Zodiac — but strikingly fast and precise in the water, relying on keen hearing and sensitive whiskers to find prey beneath the surface. A close pass from one in a Zodiac, or the sight of a kill at a colony's edge, tends to be among the sharper memories of a Peninsula voyage.